


leaders leading

by NotMyOrthonym



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Oneshot, kind of a character introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:08:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1509899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotMyOrthonym/pseuds/NotMyOrthonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's left of the human race really couldn't've asked for two better leaders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leaders leading

They are both leaders. 

That’s it, that’s their core, they’re _leaders_. 

He had to be. For Octavia. He had to protect her, he had to keep her safe, and she was so young and so reckless, and he had to be the big brother. He had to take the lead. He learned young how to give orders, how to protect her. 

In many ways protection is his essence. It is a very practical form of leadership, one that doesn’t bother with _ideals_. It is routed in his emotional core, in the deep instinct to protect what is his, what he loves, to keep others from taking it. It burns in those moments of near misses, when Octavia was almost – and then it exploded when she _was_. And it shattered when his mother was floated, when he watched her face as – he can still feel the shards embedded in his soul when he thinks about it. He leads because he won’t let anyone take what is his ever again, because he is driven by a fundamental urge to _protect_.

(To this day he doesn’t know why the guards didn’t take him too. He guesses his mother took all the blame herself. Her only fault, after all, was loving her children too much. And he had learned how to keep his mouth shut long ago, so he didn’t exactly contradict her. He knew the value of silence.)

And yeah, he enjoys the power trip too. He likes the way people snap to, because he knows what to say, because he says what they want to hear. He will be whatever he has to be for him and his to survive. 

His leadership was born of furtive glances and a very clear understanding of us vs. them. He didn’t get the luxury of looking up.

And maybe that’s why Clarke’s brand of leadership pisses him off so much. 

Because Clarke is a leader because that is what she was born to be. She was born looking up, looking for the light and the good, and was shown them right from birth. She was taught to _trust_ , to _believe_. With her golden hair and her ‘holier-than-thou’ routine, she looks like an angel of judgment, one who has no idea how the real world works. She imposes her ideals on the world without any thought of practical implication. She is governed by nobility and idealism, and he envies that nobody ever took that from her. 

He doesn’t think about the fact that her father was floated too, that she had to watch just as much as he did. He doesn’t wonder how she still believes in the goodness of people after that. 

(He doesn’t even know that it is her mother’s fault.)

Not yet, anyway.

He thinks how naïve she is when she believes that Jasper will pull through. He can’t quite order the death, for all his rough-and-tough attitude he still shies away from that, but he knows he’ll die soon anyway. So what does it matter, why speed it along? Besides, Octavia would hate him forever. At least he’s not deluded, not like fucking Clarke, who clings to hope almost pathetically. 

It doesn’t occur to him till he watches her kill Atom that she simply knows what hopeless is.

(There will come a time, later, much later, when he will ask her about that. And she won’t tell him everything, she won’t tell him about the exact course of her medical training, of what she saw at her mother’s side. But she’ll tell him enough. Tell him about some of the people that couldn’t be saved. And he’ll think of some of the people he saw on the lower levels, and know what she means.)

Even after Wells dies, he doesn’t wonder how she stays hopeful. When she accuses Murphy of killing him, it doesn’t even occur to him that she is fueled by vengeance. She is the Princess, of course she’s just after this ideal of _justice_. And he watches it blow up in her face. He thinks he’ll see that hope die, and he takes an amount of vindictive pleasure in that. But it doesn’t, it just shifts onto him. If she can’t believe in the goodness of the group, she’ll believe that he can stop it, that he _will_ stop it. And so he purposely disappoints her, because that’s how the real world works, _Princess_.

But it’s the girl, it’s Charlotte, more than him, that kills a part of that hope. It’s this little girl who _killed_ someone because of him, but confesses to _save_ another. A little girl who jumps off a cliff to protect people. A little girl a little too much like him. And so in the end, Clarke bends to him, and he bends to her, and they meet in the middle, both a little more broken than before. She can’t trust people so much anymore, not quite, not after that. They can’t be trusted with the truth, and she learns the value of lies. And he lets her banish Murphy, even though the voice in his head that sounds like the multitude says to kill him. Kill him for Charlotte. But he can’t quite, not yet, and he lets Clarke win instead. And that night she and Finn sit closer to him at the campfire, and he wonders for the first time why he couldn’t kill Atom. And why she could. And he wonders who exactly Clarke is. 

After the shooting stars, when Finn is busy, too busy with his new (old) girlfriend, Clarke is alone a lot more. 

They work together now, to lead. He thinks of the people on the ground and she thinks of the people on the Ark and somehow they muddle out the best solutions for everyone. And she learns to listen to him. And he learns to listen to her. And over time, they begin to understand one another better. She begins to turn to him outside of meetings, to sit next to him at the campfire every night, to jostle him when he makes fun of her for wanting company.

Hope is her weapon, as he comes to understand. In the same way that he uses cynicism to armor himself, in the same way that he guards against disappointment, she uses hope. He believes the worst in people, that is the sacrifice he makes to protect his family. She believes the best, because humanity has to be worth what she does for it. Humanity has to be worth the sacrifices they have made. Humanity has to be worth her father’s life. 

He thought that her ideals were born out of naivety, that only someone who had never seen the truth of the world could believe like that. It is not until later, until she leans back next to him at a campfire and lets a little of her self-righteous wall down, that he understands. She does not believe blindly, simply fiercely. She knows the worst of humanity, but she has also seen the best. She clings to that best so tightly because she has to. Because hope is her protection. 

And for all that she appears the white knight next to him, he will come to learn how ruthless she can be. He will learn that she can be the avenging angel, that all about her is not good and pure and right. He will watch the twist of her face when someone carelessly mentions Wells, when some idiot in a bad mood defaces his grave, and he will watch her fist tighten. She puts her pencil down first, not wanting her white knuckled grip to break it, and he wonders how she can be so calm and so angry at the same time. She is stubborn and hard headed and her core is made of unmovable stone. 

She leads the hunting parties and brings back food, and he winces sometimes when he watches her skin it next to her tent. And she pokes fun at him for being so soft, so squeamish. And it is a joke, but he hears a surprising amount of truth in it. Because when it comes down to it, he is _not_ a murderer. He can’t take another’s life, not looking them in the face, not the way she has. At his core he is a protector. At hers, she is an angel, a warrior of God. And she is glorious and beautiful and believes in the good of humanity and will kill to save it. She stands a hundred feet tall, immovable. And he is a rogue, fighter of a different kind, he will make himself into whatever he needs to be to keep his people safe. He compromises, he is forever changing. And so when it comes to appeasement, he is the one that people learn to come to, he is the one who can be convinced. 

They work well together, once they get over themselves and see what’s going on. She keeps him honest and helps him see the good, and he helps her learn how to apply her ideals to the world they live in now. She keeps him routed in principles, keeps him from being swayed too much by those around him, and he teaches her to bend a little more, to compromise. They balance each other out, and together they are more than equipped to lead humanity into a new age. 

(And, of course, the sex is just incredible.)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I am now thoroughly obsessed with this show and this pairing and there is not nearly enough fic for it so I thought I'd contribute. Maybe later in the season when I know these characters better I'll write an actual fic and not just a oneshot. 
> 
> Sorry it wasn't super shippy guys. Also it's kind of pretentious, reading back over it. ... Oh well.


End file.
